The invention relates generally to a chuck for use in rotating equipment, such as a lathe.
A chuck typically rotates in response to a rotary drive, such as an electric motor. In large equipment, such as a stationary lathe, the chuck is quite massive. In general, the chuck has an all-steel body to resist the erosive nature of material cut and projected away from a work piece. Unfortunately, the all-steel body requires a considerable amount of torque to turn the chuck and, also, a considerable amount of time to accelerate the chuck up to the desired speed. As a result, the equipment may utilize a relatively larger motor, at a higher cost, to increase the torque and improve the response time. Otherwise, with a smaller motor, the equipment may simply have a lower response time, which results in an overall increase in the time for any given process with the equipment. Thus, the all-steel body results in a tradeoff between cost and performance.